For a fugitive with $5 million (€3.6m) bounty on his head, Ratko Mladić seemed remarkably unconcerned about his own security. Dancing in public and relaxing among family, friends and aides is not exactly the behaviour one would expect from a man wanted for allegedly ordering the slaughter of 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) at Srebrenica in 1995. But that is exactly what Mladić was shown doing in previously unseen video footage that was published last week.

Most of the video-clips add little to what had already long been established, however: most appeared to have been filmed in the 1990s and early 2000s, a period when Mladić was known to have been protected by a 50-strong unit of the then-Yugoslav army and moved quite freely in Serbia (the video also shows him in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo). Testimony given last week by a former member of the unit at a Belgrade court – “we were tasked with protecting Mladić from criminals and bounty hunters” – underlined that knowledge.

The video-clips would add to our knowledge only if a central claimed aired by the host of the programme were right – that some videos were shot more recently. Bakir Hadžiomerović, who hosts the “60 Minutes” show aired by the public-service broadcaster FTV in the Bosniak-Croat part of Bosnia, said one video, which according to him shows a frail but relaxed Mladić at a skiing resort with his wife and daughter-in-law, was filmed as recently as last winter.

That casts doubts over the Serbian government’s claims that the search for Mladić is one of its top priorities. Since 2002, when the army unit protecting Mladić was disbanded, all Serbian governments have claimed to have lost track of Mladić. All have insisted they would arrest him and hand him over to the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague as soon as he was located, a vow whose sincerity has been questioned by suspicions that elements within the army have sheltered Mladić.

But there has been a uniform rejection of Hadžiomerović’s claims. The Serbian government has, unsurprisingly, dismissed Hadžiomerović’s claims as nonsense, saying all the videos had been filmed prior to 2002 and handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by Serbia late last year. The latter statement was promptly confirmed by the ICTY’s spokeswoman, Olga Kavran. Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, who handles most of the region’s dealings with the EU, also appeared certain that the videos were not filmed recently. Most importantly, though, Serge Brammetz, the ICTY’s chief prosecutor, is reported to have told EU foreign ministers on 16 June that all the clips were old and known to the prosecution. He suggested that Serbia’s handing over of the tape was itself evidence of improved co-operation on Serbia’s part.

Scepticism about Hadžiomerović’s claim is warranted because of the nature of the “60 Minutes” show, which features a curious mixture of investigative and campaigning journalism, the bulk of which is articulated in extremely coarse language that would be considered libellous even in the rest of the Balkans. While the show has often uncovered evidence of corruption, it also boasts a history of presenting as fact claims that soon turn out to be unsubstantiated.

Even so, Hadžiomerović’s show triggered an avalanche of reactions, most of them predictable. Understandably, the footage was painful for relatives of those killed in Srebrenica (“I was watching him walking around freely, and my son, husband, brother-in-law and much of my people are dead… They say they can’t find him, but all the while he has been walking around freely in Belgrade!” said one woman). For Bosniaks more generally, the videos demonstrated that Serbian authorities have always protected Mladić, and are still doing so.

In Serbia, the footage was seen as a deliberate attempt by Bosniak politicians to set back Serbia’s efforts to develop its relationship with the EU, whose stance is in turn heavily dependent on assessments by the ICTY of Serbia’s co-operation. Its latest report, discussed by EU ministers just days after the video was released, left room for the Netherlands to maintain its minority position that a tough line should be maintained against Serbia. Brammertz said that Serbia is co-operating more than before, but its co-operation cannot be described as “full” until Mladić and Goran Hadžić, a former leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, are captured. They are “within the reach” of Serbia’s security forces, he said.

In the event, the footage failed to de-rail one important specific step: EU plans to relax visa restrictions. Despite the footage, the Dutch parliament agreed last week to support lifting visas for Serbia and, on 15 June, EU foreign ministers formally agreed that the Commission should set in motion a process that could lead to the scrapping of visas for Macedonians, Serbs and Montenegrins. Bosnians would still need visas, reflecting its failure to meet a long list of largely technical conditions – a reality that prompted some Serbian officials to speculate that Bosniak politicians had orchestrated the release of the Mladić footage to avoid Bosnia being left behind.

Questions for Boris Tadić

While quite predictable and so far without political impact, the episode raises important questions about Serbia.

Serbian officials said the footage was discovered in a raid on Mladić’s family house in Belgrade (together with other potential evidence, such as Mladić’s alleged wartime diaries). But if the Belgrade authorities are being truthful about the timing of the raid – late last year – how is it that the security services had not searched a location as obvious as Mladić’s home before? If they had and failed to find the videos, the services were not looking properly. These are not services known for such incompetence.

If the videos had been planted in between two raids by people loyal to Mladić for the security services to find them, it would appear that the security forces were not properly watching a location that obviously needed to be watched.

It is difficult to think of any plausible reason why the administration of President Boris Tadić, a moderate who has staked his political life almost entirely on Serbia’s EU future, would in any way want to obstruct Mladić’s arrest. And, in any case, the country has already handed over to the tribunal scores of men – including former presidents and generals – with very little opposition from the public.

Still, his claim that the security services are searching for, but have not yet been able to locate Mladić, begs questions. It is possible that Mladić is as innovative as his political commander during the Bosnian war, Radovan Karadžić, who managed to evade capture until last year by doubling as a New Age healer. But Serbia is a relatively small country, whose secret services have been both admired and feared, depending on the historical context or your point of view. Is Tadić, whose stock-in-trade includes not only his liberal, pro-EU stance on most issues, but also his alleged ability effectively to tame state structures, really certain that his government is fully in charge of the security services? He should be double-checking this frequently and until Mladić is arrested – and not only for his or Serbia’s own good.

Irrespective of the actual facts surrounding any new spat between Belgrade and Sarajevo, and the Bosnian Serbs and Muslims in particular, what these video-clips demonstrate is that Mladić will retain the ability to generate fresh acrimony for as long as he is at large.

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Vladimir

It’s quite possible that Tadic is afraid of getting a bullet like Djindic. I doubt they are holding him as a negotiating chip with EU, they would have cashed it a long time ago. And the Serbian government knows where he is, that much no one seriously doubt. As you pointed out their secret services are (in)famous.

Serbia is far from democratic in the Western sense, they are a backward country with Seselj supporters and the notorious Church still holds a lot of sway. Not only is Mladic seen a hero for massacring “Turks” (Bosniaks) but he is also an ex-General so Tadic fears the Church, the chetniks loonies and the old army people.